1888: Diplomat and financier Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. was born in Boston.

1901: President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y. (McKinley died eight days later; Czolgosz was executed on October 29.)

1916: The first self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, was opened in Memphis, Tenn., by Clarence Saunders.

1939: The Union of South Africa declared war on Germany.

1943: Seventy-nine people were killed when a New York-bound Pennsylvania Railroad train derailed and crashed in Philadelphia.

1952: Canadian television broadcasting began in Montreal.

1966: South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was stabbed to death by an apparently deranged page during a parliamentary session in Cape Town.

1970: Palestinian guerrillas seized control of three U.S.-bound jetliners. (Two were later blown up on the ground in Jordan, along with a London-bound plane hijacked on September 9; the fourth plane was destroyed on the ground in Egypt. No hostages were harmed.)

1985: All 31 people aboard a Midwest Express Airlines DC-9 were killed when the Atlanta-bound jetliner crashed just after takeoff from Milwaukee's Mitchell Field.

Advertisement

1991: The Soviet Union recognized the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Russian lawmakers upheld a decision by residents of Leningrad to restore the city's pre-revolutionary name, St. Petersburg.

1997: A public funeral was held for Princess Diana at Westminster Abbey in London, six days after her death in a car crash in Paris.

2002: Meeting outside Washington, D.C. for only the second time since 1800, Congress convened in New York to pay homage to the victims and heroes of September 11.

2003: Mahmoud Abbas resigned as Palestinian prime minister.

2008: In the wake of Russia's military standoff with Georgia, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that now was not the right time for the U.S. to move forward on a once-celebrated deal for civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia. (President George W. Bush canceled the deal two days later.) More than 100 people died in a rockslide that crashed into a shantytown just outside Cairo, Egypt.

2012: President Barack Obama conceded only halting progress toward solving the nation's economic woes, but vowed in a Democratic National Convention finale, "Our problems can be solved, our challenges can be met." Drew Peterson, the former Illinois police officer who'd gained notoriety after his much-younger wife, Stacy, vanished in 2007, was convicted of murdering a previous wife, Kathleen Savio. (Peterson was later sentenced to 38 years in prison.) Rihanna won video of the year at the MTV Awards for "We Found Love." One Direction won best pop video, best new artist and most share-worthy video for "What Makes You Beautiful."